Students have designs on Cairngorms

Architecture students at Aberdeen's Robert Gordon University have drawn up ideas for attracting more people to live and work in the Cairngorms.

Published:16:00Wednesday 15 June 2016

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Architecture students at Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University have drawn up ideas for attracting more people to live and work in the Cairngorms.

The final year students have proposed ideas for the Cairngorms National Park, which takes in the communities of Braemar, Ballater and Tomintoul, such as the introduction of live and work spaces, the alternative use of mothballed distilleries and building more affordable housing.

The two-year unit was led by Professor Gokay Deveci who said: “Scottish Towns may be perceived as having evolved organically.

“However, in Scotland, almost 500 villages with diverse economic and social activities were planned by landowners during the eighteen and nineteenth centuries and some of these are based in Cairngorms.

“Many of the settlements and towns within the park are now facing similar issues, such as ageing populations, the migration of working age people to more urban areas and a struggling economic situation, so the students have looked at ways of developing architectural solutions to address these.

“The focus was on creating adaptable and dynamic structures suitable for the northerly context of the Cairngorms.”